The HighLand Dragon's Lady
by XxBookOfLifexX
Summary: Lucy has always known her rambling family home was haunted. She's also aware her brother has invited one of his friends to attend an ill-conceived séance. She didn't count on that friend being so handsome...and she certainly didn't expect him to be a dragon.
1. Chapter 1

_Hello, this will be my first fanfic._

*This is a NaLu*

*The story is way different from the original Fairy Tail*

*The setting is in England the olden days*

*But Natsu is a dragon here*

*If you come across _**ORLAND**_ that's the Jiemma's and Minerva's Last Name (just in case you guys will be confused)*

*There's no guild here*

*Laxus and Lucy is a family in Deryer not Heartfilia.*

*Natsu and Sting and Rouge are brothers in Dragneel*

*I still haven't decided when my uploading schedule will be.. (but if I find out I will tell you guys)*

*This story is still in the process, so I'm writing as I upload (so even I don't know how the ending will be)*

*There will be lemons*

*I don't own Fairy Tail*

*I think that's all for now!*

Enjoy!

 **ONE**

July 1895

SOMEONE WAS CLIMBING UP TO NATSU DRAGNEEL'S  
room.

The plum tree below the balcony where he stood was moving, first lower branches shaking, then higher ones. The night was windless, and neither a bird nor a squirrel would cause quite that much disturbance.  
Not even the stable cats of Fairy Tail, overfed as they were, could manage it.

So, then : a human being, and probably a live one, despite the abbey's reputation for ghosts. Ghosts generally didn't bother climbing trees, in Natsu's limited experience.

He didn't think Fairy Tail housed any mortals who wanted him dead. When the eldest son of the house asked a chap to pay a visit. the locals weren't generally disposed towards assassination, at least outside of novels. Laxus Dreyer and his parents seemed harmless enough, and the other houseguests would be more likely to drive a man to suicide than kill him outright, although Natsu thought Mrs. Dreyer wouldn't be above a discreet bit of arsenic in the teacup if she thought the situation required it.

Of course, he could be wrong.

The leaves were rustling just above the edge of the balcony now. Natsu stepped back into the shadows and waited. One way or another, he suspected he'd be enjoying himself immensely over the next few minutes.

The intruder shimmied off a branch, grabbed the edge of the balcony, and swung herself up to sit on the side railing. Herself was the definitive pronoun: the girl in question was wearing a man's shirt and a pair of trousers, but both were rather small even for the average stable boy, and she…wasn't. Athletic and limber, yes; boyish, definitely not.

This evening was definitely looking more interesting.

Nonchalantly, with the air of having regularly occupied exactly such a seat, Natsu's visitor slid forward on the railing, twined her leg around the marble bars below her, and made herself comfortable. In the darkness, from Natsu's distance, a mortal man would have seen her figure and the braid of the blonde hair trailing behind her.

Not being mortal, Natsu saw that her face was long and delicate-looking, with big brown eyes and a turned-up nose with a spray of light freckles across it.

That was as far as observation took him before the girl started to speak.

"You really are a prize idiot, you know that?"

Other people, most notably Natsu's siblings, had made similar observations, but they hadn't prepared him to receive such comments with perfect equanimity, particularly coming from the small mouth of a girl he'd never met in his life.

Words didn't precisely fail him. He could think of quite a few. But the process of choice stumped him just then and created a receptive silence, which the girl clearly read as a request for more on the same theme.

"If you don't like a girl, you poor dumb fish," she went on, "the thing to do is to avoid her, and possibly to talk about women whenever you can. You do not have long, vague conversations with her in gardens at twilight, and you certainly don't jump into lakes after her hat. And you needn't tell me that you do like her, because this is me talking to you, and I know perfectly well that you don't. It doesn't seem likely that anyone could."

Hat? Lake? Gardens? Natsu would have admitted, under very little pressure, to having walked in any number of gardens with any number of women. He couldn't precisely swear that, over the course of three hundred years, he'd never rescued a hat from a watery grave. None of the above, however, had happened over the course of his name at Fairy Tail.

He cleared his throat.

"Which brings me to point two," said the girl, sensing that the moment was right to press forward like the proverbial wolf on the fold, "which is that, if you think you're going to marry her, I'll throw you into the lake myself. There are plenty of perfectly nice girls in England who'd be glad to marry anybody. Even if you've given in to Zeref at last, you've got no need to choose some" —she waved one white-clad arm in a vigorous manner, causing Natsu to shift his weight forward in case she fell from the railing—"some mad scientist's cross between a toffee pudding and a Salvation Army captain."

"Ah—"

The girl slid down from the railing. Her tone softened. Having gotten the initial message across, she clearly felt that she could now show some mercy. "Don't fret," she said. "I'll get you out of it this time, and I'll have a word with Zeref about the sort he keeps pushing on you. But do be careful, won't you? Leave the Orland to that dancing-master-looking Scottish chap you brought down. He knows how to handle a girl, if you believe Bettina. And Lily. And—"

"My dear lady." said Natsu, stepping forward and bowing before she could continue the list. Housemaids were clearly creatures of little discretion and a great deal of trouble. "I'm afraid you've been laboring under a case of mistaken identity."

At this point, the situation could have gone a number of ways. The girl might have screamed. She might have fainted, although your modern girl, in Natsu's experience, was rather beyond fainting, particularly the specimen of modern girl who climbed up to balconies in the dead of the night. She might have thrown a small but tasteful potted geranium at Natsu's head, or she might have slapped him.

Instead, she laughed.

Respecting the hour, she laughed quietly, but she didn't otherwise bother to restrain herself. She leaned against the railing, tilted her head back, and broke into a cascade of giggles that made her shoulders shake and let Natsu see that her breasts were clearly unbound beneath her shirt. The night air, even in July, had a certain chill, but heat welled up between his legs nonetheless. He adjusted his dressing gown to provide a little more discretion.

"Well, I'll be damned," she said eventually. "You're—"

"The dancing-master-looking Scottish chap. Natsu Dragneel, and your service."

"Lucy Dreyer. Er, Lucy. Miss Dreyer." She made a face. "Doesn't seem like I can stand on propriety, though, considering the circumstances. And I've known plenty of dancing masters in my life, all of them very handsome and, um, respectable."

"Good Lord, I hope not."

Lucy giggled again. "You really ought to have let me know sooner," she said.

"Oh, aye, probably. But you didn't really give me much chance to think, you know, Poor Laxus."

"Poor Laxus, my foot. You don't know half the trouble he'd have gotten into if I wasn't his sister. And why are you in his room, anyhow?"

Ultimately, because Mr, Orland broke his ankle," Natsu said and remembered that Lucy was a daughter of Fairy Tail. "Have any of the steps on the front stairway ever broken before?"

"Not since we've been here," said Lucy, "but that'll only be two years at Candlemas." She lifted her eyebrows. "If you're asking whether I think the ghost could be responsible, the answer is yes. But you knew it would it be. You're here because of the ghost, aren't you?"

"I'm here because your brother invited me. And because I was curious." Natsu admitted.

Mr. Dreyer had not invited public scrutiny of his house's less material inhabitants. His guest list, though comprised of a number of people versed in the occult, included nobody as well-known as Blavatsky had been or Besant still was, and he was clearly trying his hardest to seem as if he'd simply decided to host the indefinite houseguests that any wealthy man might welcome in summer. They'd all played croquet the day before, and there'd been sundry talk of shooting and boating among those assembled.

Laxus had to put invitation in almost those terms. "It'll be a lark," he'd said. "Even if they don't manifest more than a bit of landgauze. And I could use a bit of friendly company."

"You do seem like a curious sort of man," said Lucy, giving him a once-over. "Since Laxus invited you and not Zeref, does that mean you've no idea what to do with a ghost?"

"Depends on the ghost, I should think."

"Ha," said Lucy, her suspicions clearly confirmed. "Well, if you're just up to gawk, at least you won't be drifting around being mystic at everyone. We had a girl in over the winder who kept lecturing me on the spiritual properties of my food. I think I lost two stone before I fled back to London."

"I'd imagine you'd find that helpful, considering your hobbies." Natsu gestured towards the tree.

"One, climbing trees isn't a hobby; two, I wasn't that heavy to start with—so chivalrous of you to mention that, by the way—and three, that plum is very sturdy."

"Not as sturdy as the floor, I'd think. Do you always take the arboreal route?"

"It's easier than sneaking through the house," said Lucy, shrugging. "Even when I was a child and we didn't have ghosts, we had vases. And ornamental table. And hat stands. Do you know how much damage the average hat stand can do to a growing girl?"

Natsu laughed. "I can't say I've ever made a study. But why sneak at all?"

"When I was young because of"—she waved a hand—"nannies and governesses and housemistresses and things. They disapprove of nighttime excursions. I can't imagine why. I've always found them awfully broadening to the mind."

"That's probably why," said Natsu.

"And now I don't want to wake the place. The maids talk, and then Mater frets—and if I want to air certain frank views about certain houseguests, it's dashed hard to find a time to do so during the day. Especially with those houseguests languishing around the place all the time, pouting soulfully."

The air of scorn about Lucy was too thick, in fact, to cut with the proverbial knife. A kukri might have done the job, or a machete.

Out of a mingled sense of helpfulness and devilment, Natsu pointed out, "Such sisterly honesty isn't likely to do very much in the way of changing Laxus' mind, you know. Not if he's in love with the girl."

He knew that much from experience. Over the last few hundred years, he, Sting, and Rouge had all waxed fairly frank with each other on the subject of romantic connections, and all three had failed to make much impression—though Natsu did give himself credit for pushing along his brother's romance with the woman who was now his wife.

"He's not," said Lucy.

"Are you certain? Miss Orland isn't to everyone's tastes when it comes to personality, but there are men who like that sort of thing, and she's certainly up to the mark physically, if you'll forgive my bluntness."

"I will," said Lucy, perhaps feeling once again that a woman who vaulted onto balconies in the dead of night couldn't stick strictly to the approved rules of conversation. "But Laxus doesn't care about that, and he doesn't want to marry her."

She spoke quickly and clearly impulsively, but there was no idealism in her voice, no suggestion that she was high-minded young woman who expected her brother to care only for the heart and soul or other such sentimental rubbish. No, Lucy spoke as one who knew facts that she wasn't telling.

"He must confide in you a great deal," said Natsu, meaningfully.

"He does," said Lucy, with a sudden look of realization and alarm, "and I shouldn't be discussing him with a stranger. A pleasure to meet you, I'm sure, but—"

She turned towards the balcony.

"No, wait a bit!" Natsu said. Lucy was the best bit of entertainment he'd had all day, and he hated to lose her to a sudden attack of scruples. When she didn't turn at his voice, he darted forward and caught her by the wrist.

She did turn then, her eyes wide with fear, but it didn't matter. At the touch of skin to skin, Natsu felt a presence in his mind, a brush of warm contact that came, in the strange way that mental contact sometimes worked, with the smell of strawberries.

He thought of flying on a summer's day, wings open to the updrafts, in southern climates where he hadn't been for decades.

The he heard Lucy's shocked voice: "You're a dragon?"


	2. Chapter 2

*The Second Chapter is Up!*

*The words you don't seem fond of the meaning is down below after the chapter*

*If there's any words you don't seem familiar please tell me*

*I still don't know when my uploading schedule will be*

*I think that's all, if I missed anything please tell me*

*Thank You!*

*I don't own Fairy Tail*

Enjoy!

 **TWO**

LUCY KNEW SHE SHOULDN'T HAVE SAID IT, NOT ALOUD.

Since the age of thirteen, when her strange power had started expressing itself, she'd begun to learn the art of a closed mouth and a good poker face, as hard as both were for her. At eighteen, after an evening that still hurt to remember, she'd doubled her efforts. Now she considered herself very good when she wanted to be.

Most people didn't grab her. Most people wore gloves, and so, most of the time, did Lucy. Society made her situation a little easier that way. And most people didn't remember flying on great leathery wings or the glint of sunlight off midnight-blue scales.

Under the circumstances, Lucy really couldn't kick herself too hard for anything she blurted out.

She did wish she hadn't said it when Natsu's hand was around her wrist, though. He was a dragon. He was also tall as a man, and despite his slim body, he'd caught her with considerable strength; and from what Lucy could make out in the moonlight, he was staring at her like he'd been poleaxed.

People could get damned angry when one found out their secrets. Natsu's secret was more shattering than most.

Taking advantage of his distraction, Lucy yanked her wrist away and stepped backwards, trying not to stumble. Dignity: that was the ticket. Her backside hit the balcony railing and she yelped.

Dignity. Right.

"And what on earth," Natsu asked, tilting his head to the side and staring at her, "are you?"

He hadn't pulled the sinisterly curved knife that books said was generally inevitable in these situations. He hadn't tried to throttle her—which was an acceptable alternative from the perspective of your average faceless fiend or ax-wielding maniac—and he didn't sound angry. Speculative might end up being just as bad, in the end, but Lucy could at least play for time.

"Just a girl," she said, "as far as I've ever been able to tell."

"A girl who can read minds," said Natsu, "from a family whose house is haunted."

"We only moved in two years ago. They're not our ghosts," said Lucy, for all the good that correcting him was likely to do her, "and I can't exactly read minds. And I won't tell anyone, I promise."

Natsu chuckled. "Of course you won't. Who'd believe you? You can put your mind at ease," he added, with graceful wave of one hand. "I've no ill intentions towards you. I'm only curious."

"You mentioned that," said Lucy.

Now that she could breathe normally again, and the balcony felt more solid underneath her feet, she had to fight the urge to be surly. Her temper had been the subject of several tedious governess lectures when she was growing up. In this instance, she couldn't help feeling some justification for it.

While she was trying to adjust her view of the world, Natsu was standing there, his hands in his smoking jacket, looking down at her without any apparent care. It was quite possible that the next world out of his mouth was going to be "fascinating," and it was quite possible that Lucy would push him off the balcony if it was.

To add insult to injury, he was also handsome: tall and slim, with high cheekbones and a pointed chin, large black eyes, and thick salmon hair that blew picturesquely in the faint breeze. Lucy didn't doubt that he knew it.

She threw back her shoulders, raised her head, and asked, "Do I get to be curious too? It's not as if you're an ordinary sort of fellow."

"Oh," said Natsu, his voice dropping and taking on a caressing tone, "I'd be glad to gratify any curiosity you're having, I'm sure."

Years had passed since Lucy had left the school room, and she'd run with a bohemian crowd in the meantime. She'd heard her share of suggestive comments. Most of the time, she didn't even blush. When warmth spread across her face as Natsu spoke, it was due to the uncomfortable knowledge that other parts of her body were responding as well.

She crossed her arms over her chest and crushed the thin fabric of her shirt.

"I should've expected that," she said, trying to sound world-weary. She really should have too, except—well, he was a friend of Laxus's, and many of them weren't very interested in women.

Lucy, of course, wasn't suppose to know about such things, but there were many things she wasn't suppose to know about, and yet there was very little of the world with which she wasn't familiar by now.

So she'd thought, anyhow. She was revising that opinion at full speed.

"I didn't even know your sort enjoyed young women," she said, by way of firing a further shot across his bow, "at least not in any way but dinner."

"Myth and fable, I assure you," said Natsu. He shrugged. "Oh, there's a villain in every family, if you look hard enough. A great-great-great-uncle might have breakfasted on the occasional peasant, and I believe an ancestor on my grandfather's side swallowed up most of a Russian regiment, but that was the spoils of war. I wouldn't dream of eating anything with a mind. Besides, it's hard enough to get a cook who won't spoil beef."

"That's a weight off my mind," said Lucy, laughing despite herself.

"Glad to oblige. And speaking of minds—what exactly do you do, if you don't read them?"

"I get impressions. Thoughts. Memories, sometimes. I don't do it on purpose, and I can't control it very well. It's more like being shouted at than reading."

"Sounds unpleasant," Natsu said, with a refreshingly matter-of-fact sympathy. "Do either of your parents have the same power? I'm sure I'd have noticed by now id Laxus had."

"Are you?" Lucy asked, but she didn't wait for an answer. Gentlemen did take off their gloves to shake hands; she didn't want to think there was anything more involved, not when Natsu had been flirting with her a minute ago. "But no, he doesn't. Neither does anyone living in the family, as far as I've ever been able to tell. Levy's grandfather was suppose to have been 'odd,' but she wouldn't ever give me details, and Uncle Droy went a sort of puce color when I asked him."

"That's a bad habit. Doubtless highly destructed to all sorts of circulatory systems and limbic whatnot. You shouldn't encourage him in it."

"I try not to encourage that side of the family in anything much. They're the sort that need sitting at regular intervals. But it was when I first started to read people," she said, "and I was—well, curious. What about you? Great-great-grandfathers and so on aside."

"While I'd quite like to believe myself unique in many ways," Natsu said, smiling, "my powers aren't one of them. Not that England is festooned with dragons, you understand, but there are a few of us, even as late as my generation. Perhaps there are more than that, only the blood runs too thin for them to change shapes. Talents like mine—and yours—do generally pass on down the family line."

"You would say that, wouldn't you?"

Natsu blinked at her, satisfyingly surprised by the change in direction. "How do you mean?"

"I do pay some attention when Zeref talks. You're the lord's son, aren't you?" Memories from finishing school were always at her fingertips somehow, even when more practical things slipped her mind. "The Honorable Natsu Dragneel?"

"As a matter of formality, yes," he said, and his eye glinted red in the moonlight. He took a step towards Lucy. "In actuality, I'm honorable only when I can't find any way 'round it."

Once again, Lucy was glad the railing was there to support her. This time, the weakness in her knees was more pleasant, but no less dangerous.

"I can believe that easily enough," she said and didn't even try very hard to sound disapproving. "Even without my power."

"In all justice," Natsu said, "you have to admit I've not done anything particularly scandalous tonight. I was simply admiring the view, and I'll presume so far as to think your father wouldn't have given me this room if he'd minded the use of the balcony."

"But he didn't," said Lucy, finding a point of challenge and grabbing for it. "It's Laxus' room. You're just here because the vicar broke his ankle—and I'm not quite sure how that means you get Laxus' room, come to think of it."

"He was going to switch with Mrs. Weisslogia, but she likes an eastern view," Natsu said, and his brow crinkled slightly as he thought. "So she traded with Miss. Skiadrum, but Mis Skiadrum is allergic to the lilacs on this side of the house, and I believe she—"

"Oh, no more." Lucy stopped him with and upraised hand. "Or at least have the grace to work it out with a blackboard and a bit of chalk. I'm sure the right angle of a parallelogram comes into it somewhere."

An owl flew by as they laughed together, its call echoing across the garden below. It was the first moving thing Lucy had seen, other than her and Natsu, since she'd landed on the balcony. They have been the only two people in the world. They were, she thought, the only two people in a world, at least as far as Fairy Tail's residents were concerned.

"How long have you been reading people?" Natsu asked.

"Since I was thirteen. Laxus had just come back from school. That's why he knows. He's the only other one who really does."

"But you go about it in society and everything? It must be rather hard on you."

"Not as bad as all that. It only works by touching bare skin." Lucy took a step forward, looked up into his eyes, and smiled. "And that doesn't happen very often."

Fluid, laughing, Natsu help up his hands. "A point to the lady," he said, "I shouldn't have grabbed at you. But surely your maid—"

"Doesn't touch me as much as you might imagine," said Lucy. "I don't get anything through hairpins or corset strings. Besides, I can generally control myself if I know in advance that someone's going to touch me."

In moonlit silence, her words sounded like the most blatant of innuendo. From Natsu's slow smile, Lucy knew that he hadn't missed the implications, either. She looked between the smile and his heavy-lidded eyes felt her heart start beating faster.

Lucy couldn't think of anything to say that would cut the tension between them. She couldn't think of much to say in general. Any minute Natsu was going to say something, and it would be urbane and witty and put her even more off her footing than she was now—or he'd be one og those horrid skillful men who could put her at ease, and they'd both know that he was doing so.

So Lucy stepped forward and kissed him.

Scandalous as many found her life, Lucy knew that certain things were appropriate and others were not. Rules governed the universe, as strong as the laws of gravity or Levy's fussing about seating arrangements. One of those rules was that, when throwing oneself into the arms of a strange man whose balcony one has invaded in the middle of the night, one does not kiss him with maidenly or timorous forbearance.

She'd never sat down and thought about that particular rule, but it seemed obvious now.

It seemed imperative, in fact that she grasp Natsu by the shoulders so that she could feel the muscles beneath the dark velvet of his dressing gown and the way that they flexed as he wrapped his arms around her. A sense of the appropriate also dictated that she open her mouth beneath his, caressing his lips with her tongue until they parted, and that she not simply melt bonelessly into his embrace but mold her body against his

One had to enter into things with the proper spirit.

Also, dear God, the man could kiss. After the first few seconds, Lucy stopped thinking about technique and tactics and appropriateness; there was too much sensation to enjoy. Natsu's tongue stroking against hers, for instance, teasing and suggestive, or the way his hands grazed over her back. She'd never thought of her spine as a particularly sensual place, for heaven's sake, but he trailed his fingers up from her waist to the back of her neck, and Lucy felt the touch throughout her whole body.

She did manage not to moan. The man was far too smug already.

At least she was also having an effect on him. That was very definite: she felt his rod rubbing against her thigh and felt as well as heard his sudden intake of breath when she writhed in response. Either he was very large, she thought hazily, or dressing gowns and breeches provided considerably more information on that score than more proper clothing. She wasn't complaining.

She wasn't complaining about the clothing at all. The shirt, small and thin as it was, let her feel Natsu's hands on her back much more and also let her press her aching breasts against his chest. Furthermore, when Natsu slid one hand down to cup her backside, she thought she felt every nerve where he touched spring to life. It was almost as good as being naked.

Before very long, she would be: naked, in her parents' house, with a man she'd met not twenty minutes before, while two floors of guests slumbered around them.

The risks crashed down on her head with the weight of a small mountain.

Lucy pulled away and stepped back. "Well," she said, breathless. "You see? I didn't learn anything about you at all."

Before Natsu could reply, she leaped to the balcony, grabbed hold of a tree branch, and scrambled back to safety.

-  
 _Poleaxed_ : hit, kill, or knock down with.

 _Picturesquely_ : visually charming or quaint, as if resembling or suitable for a painting.

 _Fable_ : a story not founded on fact.

 _Limbic_ : pertaining to or of the nature of a limbus or border; marginal.

 _Festooned_ : strings or chains or etc.

 _Vicar_ :church of england, priest.

 _Urbane_ : elegance, sophistication.

 _Timorous_ : full of fear.

 _Forbearance_ : refraining from, self-control.


End file.
